Active duty, US soldier and anarchist activist, Aaron Bushnell immolated himself in front of the Zionist embassy in Washington Sunday afternoon to protest the Zionist/American genocide in Palestine.
The entire action was live streamed. In the video Aaron states, “My name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active-duty member of the US Air Force and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest—but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”
The 25-year-old soldier is then seen dousing himself with flammable liquid and setting himself on fire until engulfed in flames. While he performs this act that would lead to his death, the he shouts “Free Palestine.”
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now,” Bushnell posted on social media hours before immolating himself.
In true American fashion, the local police, rather than helping Bushnell, they pulled firearms on him as he lay burning.
One of his comrades who worked with him to support homeless victims of capitalism stated, “He is one of the most principled comrades I’ve ever known.” Another friend stated, “He was always trying to think about how we can actually achieve liberation for all with a smile on his face.”
The Palestinian Resistance took note of his action and bravery. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
expressed its full solidarity with the soldier’s family and all the American sympathizers who took a honorable stance and whose struggle and pressure to stop the genocide on the Strip have not ceased, confirming that the act of an American soldier sacrificing his life to draw the attention of the American people and the world to the plight of the Palestinian people, despite its tragic nature and the great pain it involves, is considered the highest sacrifice and medal, and the most important poignant message directed to the American administration…
Hamas also released a statement which read:
We in the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) express our heartfelt condolences and our full solidarity with the family and friends of the American pilot Aaron Bushnell, whose name has been immortalized as a defender of humanitarian values and the plight of the oppressed Palestinian people who are suffering due to the U.S. administration and its unjust policies, like the American activist Rachel Corrie who was crushed by a zionist bulldozer in 2003 in Rafah, the same city for which Bushnell paid for with his life to pressure his country’s government to prevent the criminal zionist army from attacking it and committing massacres and violations in it.
The administration of US President Joe Biden bears full responsibility for the death of the American military pilot Aaron Bushnell due to its policy that supported the Nazi zionist entity in the genocide war against our Palestinian people, as he gave his life in order to highlight the massacres and zionist ethnic cleansing against our people in the Gaza Strip.
The heroic pilot Aaron Bushnell will remain immortal in the memory of our Palestinian people and the free people of the world, and a symbol of the spirit of global humanitarian solidarity with our people and their just cause.
The tragic incident that cost pilot Bushnell his life is an expression of the growing anger among the American people who reject their country’s policy that contributes to the killing and genocide of our people, and rejects their government’s violation of global humanitarian values, by providing cover to ensure the impunity of the Nazi entity and its leaders from punishment and accountability.